FIGURE SKATING; College Freshman Lifts His Sport Into the Era of the Quad

Can five revolutions be far behind? Not with Timothy Goebel, the first man to land three quadruple jumps in official competition, on the hunt.

Skate America, this season's inaugural event on the competitive calendar of the world's elite figure skaters, turned into a contemplation on and a celebration of the quadruple jump over the weekend at the World Arena. Somehow Michelle Kwan, skating with such seductive elegance that she received a perfect 6.0 from one judge despite a fall on her long program's triple flip, managed to win the women's competition without levitating for four rotations.

Kwan, 19, a three-time United States champion and two-time world champion, used a glide to the soundtrack of ''The Red Violin'' on Saturday night to become Skate America's first four-time ladies' champion, a quadruple coup of sorts.

But like everybody else in attendance, Kwan, now combining her skating with taking three courses at U.C.L.A., was close to dumbfounded by what happened in the men's long program. Although the competition was won once again by Aleksei Yagudin, its defending champion and the latest two-time world champion from the Russian assembly line of elite skaters, it was Goebel's unprecedented and unafraid leaping that was the talk of the event.

Never had anyone landed three quadruple jumps in the space of a single skate. But Goebel, who sneaked a quadruple salchow into the performance that left him in third place after Friday's short program, made good on his announced plan to make history in the long program on Saturday night.

''I saw Tim earlier today, and I think I said something like 'I hear you're doing three quads; is that possible?' '' Kwan said after her winning skate. ''And then because I didn't want to psych him out or anything, I told him, 'You go, Tim!' When you're pushing the envelope like that, it's pretty amazing.''

It was, especially after Goebel, a Case Western Reserve freshman from Rolling Meadows, Ill., an unprepossessing 5 feet 7 inches who describes his training regimen as ''nothing exotic,'' commenced his challenge to Yagudin and the United States champion Michael Weiss, who stood in first and second place after the short program, in inauspicious fashion.

After an unpromising beginning, when he fell after his triple lutz and stepped out of the landing on his triple axel, Goebel took heart when the time came to launch his arsenal of quadruple jumps and finished in second place.

''I knew if I wanted to stay in the medals at this event, I had to fix something and fix it quick,'' said Goebel, who is coached by Carol Heiss Jenkins, the 1960 Olympic gold medalist. So Goebel, skating to the soundtrack from ''Seven Years in Tibet,'' resuscitated his performance by pulling off a quadruple salchow-triple toe loop combination followed by a quadruple toe loop and another quadruple salchow. Goebel's feats not only distinguished him as the first man to complete three quads in official competition, but also made him the first to land two different quads in senior-level competition.

Though he won the event, Yagudin admitted that Goebel had probably altered his, and everybody's, future programs. ''A couple of years ago we were thinking about one quad,'' Yagudin said, ''and now he's done three quads; he's pushing us hard.''

Canada's Elvis Stojko, who landed the first quadruple combination jump in official competition two years ago and finished in third place here on the strength of a program that featured a quad toe loop-double toe loop combination, concurred with Yagudin.

''It's an inevitable evolution,'' Stojko said. ''It's amazing to see, and that's what sports is all about, to push forward.''

FIGURE EIGHTS

With their long programs marred by falls, two United States skaters who had been in medal position, 14-year-old SARAH HUGHES of Great Neck, N.Y., and MICHAEL WEISS, dropped to fourth.